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  His words stung. Probably because I’d done exactly that: structured my night around him, even played out in my head how it was going to go. “Screw you, Barrons. ”

  “I’m not that man, either. ”

  “Oh! In your dreams! Allow me to put this into words you taught me yourself: I resent it when you waste my time. Keys, Barrons. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. The Viper’s in the shop. ” And I missed it like I missed my long blond hair. We’d bonded, the Viper and I. I doubted I’d ever get it back. It had been heavily damaged from its high-speed trip down the sidewalk and, if I knew Barrons as well as I thought I did, he’d sell it before he’d drive it again, no matter how flawlessly it was repaired. I kind of felt the same way. When you spend that much money, you want perfection. “I need a car to drive. ”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve decided to go to the abbey for the ritual,” I said.

  “I’m not certain that’s wise. ”

  “It’s not your decision. ”

  “Maybe it should be,” he said.

  “I can’t do anything to help the MacKeltars, Barrons. ”

  “I didn’t say you should. Perhaps you should remain in the store tomorrow night. It’s the safest place for you. ”

  “You want me to hide?” My voice rose with disbelief on the last word. Months ago, I might have happily hid. Watched late night TV while painting my fingernails and toenails to match, a divine shade of pink. Now? Not a chance.

  “Sometimes caution is the wisest course,” he said.

  “Tell you what, Barrons: you come be cautious with me, I’ll stay in, too. Not because I want your company,” I said before he could make a pithy comment, “but because of that whole good-for-the-goose-and-gander thing. I’m not going to gander helplessly. ”

  “You’re the goose, Ms. Lane. I’m the gander. ”

  As if I could mistake his gender. “That was a double entendre,” I informed him stiffly. “I was being clever. Gander has multiple meanings. What good is being clever when the person you’re being clever to is too dense to get it?”

  “I’m not dense,” he said just as stiffly, and I sensed one of our childish fights looming on the horizon. “As a double entendre it didn’t work. Look up double entendre. ”

  “I know what double entendre means. And you can just shove your stupid birthday cake. I don’t even know why I bothered!”

  The silence was so protracted that I decided he’d hung up.

  I hung up, too, wishing I’d done it first.

  Twenty minutes later, Barrons stepped through the door from the back of the bookstore. Ice was crystallized in his hair, and he was pale from extreme cold.

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  I was sitting on the sofa in the rear conversation area, too aggravated to sleep. “Good. You’ve finally stopped pretending you don’t use the mirror. It’s about time. ”

  “I only use the mirror when I must, Ms. Lane. Even for me, it is . . . unpleasant. ”

  Curiosity overrode irritation. “What constitutes ‘must’? Where do you go?”

  He glanced around. “Where is the cake?”

  “I threw it away. ”

  He gave me a look.

  I sighed, got up, and got it out of the fridge. It was a seven-layer chocolate cake, with alternating raspberry and chocolate cream fillings, frosted pink, with a Happy Birthday JZB in the center, delicately scripted and adorned with flowers. It was beautiful. It was the only thing that had made my mouth water in weeks, besides Unseelie. I set it on the coffee table, then got plates and forks from the cabinet behind the counter.

  “I’m confused, Ms. Lane. Is this cake for me, or for you?”

  Yeah, well, there was that. I’d been planning on eating a lot of it myself. I’d spared no expense. I could have downloaded forty-seven songs from iTunes instead. “They were out of black icing,” I said dryly. He wasn’t reacting the way I’d planned. He didn’t look the least bit touched or amused. In fact, he was regarding the cake with a mixture of horror and . . . grim fascination; the same way I regard monsters I’m about to kill.

  I fidgeted. At the time I’d ordered it, it’d seemed like a good idea. I’d thought it was a humorous way of poking fun at our . . . relationship, while also saying, I know you’re really old and probably not human at all, but whatever you are, you still have a birthday, just like the rest of the world.

  “I believe candles are customary,” he said finally.

  I reached in my pocket, pulled out candles in the shape of numbers, and one I’d whittled to a stub of a period, and stuck them on top of the cake. He looked at me as if I’d sprouted a second head.

  “Pi, Ms. Lane? I’d pegged you for failing high school math. ”

  “I got a D. The little stuff always trips me up. But the big stuff stuck with me. ”

  “Why pi?”

  “It’s irrational and uncountable. ” Funny girl, wasn’t I?

  “It’s also a constant,” he said dryly.

  “They were out of sixes. Seems this time of year six-six-six is big,” I said, lighting the candles. “Obviously, they haven’t seen the real Beast, or they wouldn’t be playing at worshipping it. ”

  “Have there been more sightings?” He was still frowning at the cake, looking at it as if he expected it to sprout dozens of legs and begin scuttling toward him, thin-lipped, teeth bared.

  “It’s been transferring hands every day. ” There was a stack of papers by the couch. The crimes the newspapers were reporting made eating breakfast while reading it risky.

  He lifted his gaze from the cake to my face.

  “It’s just a cake. I promise. No surprises. No chopped-up Unseelie in there,” I joked. “I’ll even eat the first slice. ”

  “It’s far from ‘just’ a cake, Ms. Lane. That you procured it implies—”

  “—that I was having a sweet craving and used you for an excuse to indulge. Blow out the candles, will you? And lighten up, Barrons. ” How had I not realized the delicacy of the ice I was on? What in the world had made me think I could give him a birthday cake and he’d be anything but weird about it?

  “I’m doing this for you,” he said tightly.

  “I get that,” I said. I was really glad I’d vetoed getting balloons. “I just thought it would be fun. ” I stood, holding the cake out to him in both hands, so he could blow out candles before they dripped wax on the pretty confection. “I could use a little fun. ”

  I sensed violence in the room a split second before it erupted. In retrospect, I think he thought he had it caged, and was nearly as surprised as I.

  Cake and candles exploded from my hands, shot straight up in the air, hit the ceiling, and stuck there, dripping gobs of icing. I stared up at it. My lovely cake.

  Then I was trapped between the wall and his body, with no awareness of having gotten there. He’s frighteningly quick when he wants to be. I think he could give Dani a run for the money. He had my hands pinned above my head, braceleted at the wrists by one of his. The other was around my throat. His head was down and he was breathing hard. For a moment, he rested his face in my neck.

  Then he pulled back and stared at me and when he spoke his voice was low with fury. “Never do that again, Ms. Lane. Do not insult me with your silly rituals, and idiotic platitudes. Never try to humanize me. Don’t think we’re the same, you and I. We’re not. ”

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  “Did you have to ruin it?” I cried. “I’d been looking forward to it all day. ”

  He shook me, hard. “You have no business looking forward to pink cakes. That’s not your world anymore. Your world is hunting the Book and staying alive. They’re mutually exclusive, you bloody fool. ”

  “No, they’re not! It’s only if I eat pink cakes that I can hunt the Book! You’re right—we’re not the same. I can’t walk through the Dark Zone at night. I don’t scare all the other monsters away. I need
rainbows. You don’t. I get that now. No birthdays for Barrons. I’ll pen that in right next to Don’t wait on him and Don’t expect him to save you unless there’s something in it for him. You’re a jackass. There’s a constant for you. I won’t forget it. ”

  His grip on my throat relaxed. “Good. ”

  “Fine,” I said, though I don’t really know why. I think I just wanted the last word.

  We stared at each other.

  He was so close, his body electric, his expression savage.

  I moistened my lips. His gaze fixed on them. I think I stopped breathing.

  He jerked so sharply away that his long dark coat sliced air, and turned his back to me. “Was that an invitation, Ms. Lane?”

  “If it was?” I asked, astonishing myself. What did I think I was doing?

  “I don’t do hypotheticals. Little girl. ”

  I looked at his back. He didn’t move. I thought of things to say. I said none of them.

  He vanished through the connecting door.

  “Hey,” I shouted after him, “I need a car to drive!” There was no answer.

  A large chunk of cake dropped from the ceiling and splatted on the floor.

  It was mostly intact, just a little goopy.

  Sighing, I got a fork and scraped it onto a plate.

  It was noon the next day when I got out of bed, cleared my monster alarm from in front of my door, and opened it.

  Waiting outside for me was a thermos of coffee, a bag of doughnuts, a set of car keys, and a note. I unscrewed the thermos top, sipped the coffee, and unfolded the note.

  Ms. Lane,

  I would prefer you join me in Scotland this evening, but if you insist on helping the old witch, here are keys, as you requested. I moved it for you. It’s the red one, parked in front of the door. Call if you change your mind. I can send a plane as late as 4:00.

  CJ

  It took me a moment to figure out the initials. Constant Jackass. I smiled. “Apology accepted, Barrons, if it’s the Ferrari. ”

  It was.

  SIXTEEN

  Liminal” is a fascinating word. Times can be liminal: Twilight is the transition from day to night; midnight is the crack between one day and the next; equinoxes and solstices and New Year’s Day are all thresholds.

  Liminal can also be a state of consciousness: for example, those moments between waking and sleeping, also known as threshold consciousness, or hypnagogia, a state during which a person might think herself fully alert, but is actually actively engaged in dreaming. This is the time that a lot of people report a convulsive jerk, or a feeling of physically falling.

  Places can be liminal: airports with people constantly coming and going, but never staying. People, too, can be liminal: Teens, like Dani, are temporarily stuck between child and adult. Fictional characters are often Liminal Beings, archetypes that straddle two worlds, marking or guarding thresholds, or are physically divided by two states of existence.

  Between-ness is a defining characteristic of liminal. Limbo is another. Liminal is neither here nor there but exists between one moment and the next, poised in that pause where what’s passing hasn’t yet become what’s becoming. Liminal is a magical time, a dangerous time, fraught with possibility . . . and peril.

  Halloween seemed to drag on forever. Ironic, considering I had slept until noon. I had four measly hours to kill until four o’clock, when I would leave the city to head for the abbey, yet it stretched interminably.

  I called Dani as soon as I got up. She was excited that I was coming, and told me the ritual was scheduled to begin at six-fifteen.

  “So, what is it? A lot of chanting and weirdness?” I asked.

  She laughed and said, pretty much so. Invocations had to be recited and tithes paid before the Orb could be opened and its Fae essence released to fortify the walls. I asked what kind of tithes, and she got a little cagey. I wondered if Rowena planned to use my blood or something. I wouldn’t put it past her.

  I called Christian and he said all was a go. His uncles had begun the Druid rites at dawn, although Barrons wouldn’t be joining them until later in the day.

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  I called Dad, and we talked for a long time about cars and my job and the usual light stuff that makes up our conversations lately. I hate that Barrons Voiced him into a worry-free stupor, and I’m grateful for it. If Dad had said one halfway deep or insightful thing to me today, I might have burst into tears and told him all my problems. This is the man who kissed every bump or bruise I ever had, even the imaginary ones when I was little, and just wanted a Princess Jasmine Band-Aid and to be cuddled and cooed at, sitting on his lap.

  After a while, I asked for Mom. There was a long pause, and I was afraid she wouldn’t come to the phone—then she did, and I can’t describe the joy I felt at hearing her voice for the first time in months!

  Though she chose her words with uncharacteristic tentativeness, she was coherent, clearheaded, and obviously not drugged. Dad said she still tired very easily so I kept the conversation short and sweet, telling her nothing but happy news: My job was fabulous, I had a great employer, I’d gotten a raise, I was hoping to start my own bookstore when I came home, I was making concrete plans to finish college and get a degree in business, and no, I couldn’t make Thanksgiving but yes, I would try as hard as I could to get home for Christmas.

  Necessary lies. I understand them now. I could almost feel Alina, standing behind me, nodding her head, as I boosted our mother’s spirits. Every time the phone had rung for me in Ashford, Georgia, and my sister had made me laugh and feel loved and safe, she’d been standing in Dublin, wondering if she’d be alive tomorrow.

  After I hung up, I dug into the doughnuts and punched up a random playlist on my iPod. “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” came up first, followed by “Don’t Fear the Reaper. ” I turned it off.

  I don’t know what I did until three. I think I passed a great deal of time sitting and staring into the fire. Liminal sucks. You can’t grasp it with your hands and shape it. You can’t make midnight come faster, or grow up sooner, or avoid the in-betweens. You can only hang in there, and get through them.

  I showered, put on makeup, and sleeked my hair back into a short ponytail. I tugged on black jeans, a T-shirt, a sweater, boots, and a jacket. I grabbed my backpack and stuffed my MacHalo in. I was going to be out late. I holstered my spear in my shoulder harness, tucked in two of Barrons’ short, sheathed knives I’d pilfered from an upstairs display case into my waistband, and loaded myself with diced Rhino-boy, jars in my jacket pockets, plastic Baggies in my boots. I strapped my Velcro bands with the Click-It lights around my ankles and wrists. I even slipped a vial of holy water into the front pocket of my jeans. In this town, you never know what’s coming. As they say back home, I was loaded for bear. All kinds.

  I went downstairs, glanced out the window, and did a double take, wondering if I’d lost track of time. It had been clear and light in the cold wintry way of early November, when I’d gone upstairs. Now, at three forty-five, it was nearly dark outside. A storm had blown in while I’d been blow-drying my hair. It wasn’t raining yet, but the wind was kicking up, and it looked like we might get a real ripper any time.

  I picked up the car keys and glanced around the bookstore to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything. As my gaze swept the four-story room, I shrugged off a sudden, broody fear that I might never see Barrons Books and Baubles again. Like I loved the city, I’d grown to love my store. The hardwood floors gleamed beneath the sconces and cut-amber lamps. The books were all shelved in their proper places. The magazine rack was freshly stocked. The fires were off. The sofas and chairs were invitingly positioned in cozy arrangements. The mural above me was lost in shadows. One day I was going to climb up there and see what it was. The store was tidy and quiet, stuffed with fictional worlds to be explored, business-ready and waiting for the next customer.

 
; I headed for the back door.

  It would be waiting for me when I got back tomorrow, when the walls were strong, and I had a whole year to figure things out. I would start keeping regular hours again, and get to work on my plans to set up a Web site and catalog the rare editions upstairs. No more slacking.

  But right now, an Italian stallion was waiting for me, stomping and snorting. Out back, a Ferrari was calling my name. There were two hours of road between me and where I was going, and that was one liminal I was going to love every minute of.

  SEVENTEEN

  I made it twelve blocks.

  My end of town, next to the Dark Zone, had been deserted as a war zone. Now, I knew why.

  The streets an eighth of a mile east of BB&B were so packed with people and Unseelie that motor traffic didn’t have a hope of getting through. Most of the Fae were in full human glamour, trying to incite riot, and succeeding.

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  Garda pushed among them, demanding order with raised batons. There’re enough troubled youth in Dublin—in any city, for that matter—that even a small angry mob can combust and spread like wildfire. Especially on Halloween when all the freaks come out, hiding behind better masks.

  While I watched, a few of the Garda—who were actually Unseelie in glamour—began viciously beating a group of youths with their batons, incensing the crowd. Other Unseelie began smashing out store windows, looting and encouraging others to take what they wanted. I called out to a few kids hurrying by to join the fracas. No one seemed to know what the rioting was about, nor did they care. I was afraid to get closer, for fear of damaging the car. Or me.

  Bile boiled in my stomach from the compressed multitude of Fae. At least the Sinsar Dubh wasn’t around to incapacitate me. The mob was expanding, pushing outward, and it occurred to me that getting stuck in the middle of it, sitting in a Ferrari, was a really bad idea. I backed up, hastily turned around, and drove away, glad I’d left a few minutes early.

  I dug out a map of the city from my backpack and flipped on the interior light. Although the storm still only threatened, the cloud cover had turned day to night a full hour earlier than I’d expected.

  Ten blocks north of the bookstore, I encountered another mob. I backed up, swung the car around, and headed west. It was no go. That way out of town was just as bad.